Executive functioning skills (EFS) are the building blocks to a successful person, and yet how purposeful are we in teaching these skills? When a student lacks focus, do we give them strategies for being more focused or do we simply tell them to be more focused? If a student is poor at organization, are we explicitly showing them what well organized looks like? As teachers, especially of the gifted, we need to be overt in teaching these strategies and make students aware of their own weaknesses and potential workarounds for these. EFS are skills that transcend the classroom because they are skills people will be using for the rest of their lives, no matter what line of work they go into. In this lab/workshop, learn about the core 10 EFS, how you can use micro-skills to build student capacity, and how you can intentionally teach these strategies to students.
Critical thinking shouldn't just be a happy accident—it’s a skill that can and should be taught with purpose. In this session, participants will explore practical strategies for embedding critical thinking into daily instruction across content areas. We’ll unpack what “critical thinking” really means, examine its key components, and identify common misconceptions that get in the way of teaching it effectively. Educators will learn how to design lessons, questions, and tasks that challenge students to analyze, evaluate, and create—not just recall. Using the CHESS system, attendees will leave with a toolkit of techniques to foster a classroom culture where inquiry thrives, reasoning is valued, and students become confident, independent thinkers prepared for complex problem-solving in any field.
